May 14, 2026

Gray Ghosts and Gridirons: Joe Epple’s Journey from Squamish to Stone Sheep Country

1 hour 1 minute

Look, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it — life got in the way and we missed a week. But we’re back, and this one was worth the wait.

Joe Epple is one of those guys who doesn’t fit neatly into a box. Retired professional football player. CFL veteran. Director of Business Development for Wild TV — Canada’s largest hunt and fish TV network. Co-host of The Edge, now in its 17th season. Father of two boys. Columbia blacktail hunter. Stone sheep chaser. A 6’8″ giant of a man who grew up in Squamish, British Columbia, hunting for meat and mushrooming in the rain just to make ends meet — and who somewhere along the way figured out that all those lessons in the wet coastal bush were actually building the foundation for everything that came after.

This episode goes deep on what it really means to make the transition from professional athlete to serious hunter, and why the skills that make you elite in sports — goal-setting, resilience, the ability to learn from getting your ass kicked — translate directly to the mountains. Joe talks about growing up in a logging family that hunted out of necessity, not recreation. About being the fat, knock-kneed kid who nobody bet on, who started going to a rusty prison gym at 13 and never looked back. About how hunting blacktails in the miserable, soaking wet coastal bluffs of BC taught him to push through discomfort long before any football field did.

We get into the mental game of hunting — specifically what it looks like when you’ve got 14-day fly-in stone sheep hunts on one end of the spectrum and a four-year-old who snaps every branch and asks to go back to the truck every five minutes on the other. How do you stay present? How do you keep the long game in mind when you’re sitting in the gutter on day 10 of a backcountry hunt wondering why you’re not home with your family? Joe’s got a framework for that, and it’s worth hearing.

We talk about Kristen’s bear — a giant boar that’ll likely crack the top 15 all-time in the province. About Joe’s most-prized blacktail taken at 12 yards with a bow. About why archery hunting teaches you more about your weaknesses as a hunter than anything else. About what it’s like to hunt stone sheep as a resident in BC for a fraction of what nonresidents pay, and why he still hasn’t punched an archery tag on one. And about the pressure social media puts on new hunters to skip the learning curve entirely and shoot a 200-inch muley on their first trip out.

Joe’s a straight shooter (pun intended), genuinely humble, and packed with perspective from both sides of the fence — the elite athlete world and the deep wilderness backcountry. This one’s got range. Turn it up.

Episode Sponsors

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Timestamp Chapters

0:00 — Intro & Sponsor: onX Hunt

1:30 — Sponsor: Bridger Watch

3:00 — Welcome & catching up — the missed week, quick intros

5:30 — Joe’s roots: growing up in Squamish, BC — logging family, pine mushrooms, coastal blacktails

10:00 — Why Joe pursued athletics instead of the outdoors — the unlikely path to pro football

14:30 — The transition: retiring from pro sports and returning to his outdoor roots

17:00 — Joe’s current life — Director of Business Development at Wild TV, The Edge TV show

20:00 — Raising kids in the outdoors — Walker and Wyatt, making it fun vs. making it serious

26:30 — Cody’s excavator story — how to build positive associations with hunting for young kids

30:00 — Spring bear hunting as a family — dance parties in the mountains and Kristen’s record-book bear

36:00 — The fat kid with a doctor’s note — Joe’s aha moment at 13, the rusty gym, and building self-confidence

42:00 — Growing up with zero sports culture in the house — how a 6’8″ kid ended up at Washington State on a full ride

47:00 — Blacktail hunting as the foundation — why the gray ghost builds hunters who can do anything

51:00 — Joe’s most prized blacktail — the 12-yard bow shot, the branch deflection, and the bluff recovery

54:00 — The mental game of backcountry hunting — learning lessons on every trip, reframing failure

57:30 — Archery vs. rifle — why Joe hunts with a bow even when he doesn’t have to, and what it’s cost him

60:00 — Dream archery hunts, stone sheep with a bow, and where to find The Edge on Wild TV

3 Key Takeaways

1. The Outdoors Builds the Foundation — Not the Other Way Around

Joe flipped the typical narrative. Most people assume athletic success leads to outdoor opportunity. For Joe, it was the blacktail hunts in the BC rain — the cold hands, the wet wool pants, the days you saw nothing and came back a prune — that built the grit that eventually carried him to pro football. The outdoors taught him to show up when it sucks, because the lesson is in the discomfort. If you’ve ever wondered why some people can push through brutal hunting conditions while others fold, this conversation gives you the answer: it’s not a hunting skill, it’s a life skill — and you build it long before you ever draw a tag.

2. Play the Long Game With Your Kids

Joe and Cody both land in the same place on this one: the goal isn’t to turn your four-year-old into a stealthy, branch-free hunting machine. The goal is to make sure they ask to go again. Unlimited bubbly water. Bring the toy excavator. Let them jump on every frozen puddle. Have a dance party in the mountains before you sneak over the ridge. The association you build right now — “hunting is fun, hunting is where we laugh and eat good snacks and do dumb stuff together” — is worth more than any lesson you could drill into them about staying quiet. The discipline will come. The desire to be out there has to come first.

3. Stop Writing the Story Before It’s Over

Two or three days without seeing an animal and most hunters start mentally packing it in. Joe’s been there on 14-day fly-in hunts when the wheels come off and you start questioning every decision. His counterintuitive advice: that’s the point. That’s the adventure. The highs wouldn’t mean what they mean without the lows, and things change in a moment — a bull materializes, a bear steps into the open, the hunt you’ve been grinding finally breaks your way. The story isn’t finished until you’re back in the truck. Stay in the field. Stay sharp. The last two days have a funny way of making up for everything that came before.

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By Cody Rich

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